Mobile communication terminals such as cellular phones that particularly require portability are widely used today. Most of these terminals comprise a user interface input device such as a keyboard of which many varieties exist. Until now, focus has mainly been on features and performance of these handheld units. Since users become more accustomed to operating these devices they demand more versatile and advanced, but at the same time user-friendly and efficient input interfaces.
One way in which this has been addressed is described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,535,461, which discloses a communication device comprising a one-piece rotatable ring arranged in conjunction with push buttons. By rotating the ring and applying pressure on the ring the buttons are pushed and a user is able to choose and select operations for controlling the device.
However, although the user can select operations with this configuration, the number of operations available by controlling the one-piece rotatable ring is limited due to the construction. In fact, the arrangement described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,535,461 is configured to overcome problems related to small scale input means by reducing the number of keys while maintaining data entry capability.